


unknown

by peachygreen (fairiesbyte)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Phil, Angst, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Told Out of Order, im not sure if this makes any sense and it kind of got away from me, just sort of..., melacholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 22:17:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12397362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairiesbyte/pseuds/peachygreen
Summary: The wind whipped past Phil as he walked past Picadilly Square, the chill of it nipping to his bones and making him feel alive in a way he hadn’t in a long time.  Maybe I do need a haircut, he thought to himself as his fringe hit him in the eye, temporarily blinding him, and he stepped over to the side of the pavement, out of the way of the bustling stream of people as he tried to rub the sting out of his eye.  As he stumbled over the curb in an attempt to move out of the way of a businessman barreling by he felt a buzz in his pocket and whipped out his phone as fast as he could.People shoved past him, annoyed, as he just stood there reading Dan’s message, a dopey smile on his face.Dan: <3 <3 <3Three hearts that’s all it took to make Phil’s heart melt apparently and the tall twenty-two year old couldn’t stop his face lighting up in an uncontrollable grin, happier than he’d ever been, alone in the middle of an unknown city.He had the best boyfriend in the world.or a character study of 2009 Phil pre-Dan and more charlieskies than I wanted to write





	unknown

**Author's Note:**

> bear with me here, idk what this is, idk if anyone will like it, but i think i just needed to get it out. sorry if its a little confusing, this is simultaneously too many and too little words to get across what i was trying to say
> 
> also suspend ur disbelief for the actual timeline and all that i did my best but skshk

 

The wind curled its freezing tendrils around the tips of his gloved fingers, tossing the straightener-burnt ends of his too long dyed-black hair against the gray, summer sky.Phil felt everything and nothing all at once as he stared at the goodbye messages on his screen. 

His insides felt as numb as the tips of his fingers as he tightly gripped his luggage. 

“I can’t go with you,” Phil could almost imagine Charlie saying in his deep voice, speaking almost lazily slow andlooking horribly, cruelly earnestly sympathetic. 

“I know,” Phil replied, “I didn’t want you to.” His tone was cold, but he smiled as he walked through the imaginary boy and through the sliding doors of the train station.

 

***

 

“Nothing about it can be changed,” His mum said as she puttered around the kitchen.“You can’t change the past now, if the boy wanted to go off live his ‘free life’ away from you, then he’s damn well going to go and it.Nothing you can do about it now.”

“But why couldn’t he be ‘free’ with me?” Phil asked, hating the whining quality in his voice.Phil pushed his peach cobbler around the plate, hunching his bony shoulders over the red tile counter.Even though the cobbler was delicious, all the blue eyed boy could taste was his regret.

His mum peered at him from under her blunt, too long bangs, and Phil felt very small and very sad all of the sudden.“Phil,” she said seriously, pulling up a chair on the other side of the counter.“You always do this with the people you date, and you’ve done it again with Charlie,” she flicked her light colored hair over her shoulder distractedly. 

“Charlie and I weren’t-“ Phil interjected, mouth full of cobbler, but his mum just rolled her tired eyes.

“I don’t care what he wanted to call you to, you know that relationships don’t work like that.He’s a human being and human beings don’t always do what you like them to do.” She put her thin hand over Phil’s pale long fingered one, “Charlie didn’t want to commit further than someone he could just play around with, and you deserved better than that.“Phil flicked his eyes away and down at the cooling cobbler, but Kathryn spoke anyway. ”That part of your life has ended.”

She got back up, brushing invisible dirt off the back of her pants and looking again at her son as he sat hunched and thin in his seat.“What are you going to do now?”

 

***

 

“You can’t stay,” PJ said, narrowing his light eyes as he made pools of soy sauce in his fried rice. 

“I know,” Phil replied, moving his potstickers around his plate with his clumsy use of chopsticks.No matter how much he ate, the space around his heart just felt sort of empty.

PJ waved his soaked egg roll in front of Phil’s nose and narrowed his eyes even further.“No, I’m serious,” he continued, “You have to get out of here. You’re in a rut.All you do is work, eat, sleep and make youtube videos.You haven’t even responded to people on twitter in more than a month, and you love doing that.”

“I do more than that,” Phil protested, but even he could here the insincerity in his words, “I’m out with you, aren’t I?”He stabbed at his chicken with his chopsticks, giving up on trying to pick it up, “Plus I like making videos,” he avoided PJ’s skeptical eyes by staring resolutely at the minute cracks in the paint of the table.“I am not in a rut,” he grumbled.

PJ rolled his eyes.“Your entire life can’t just stop because of a guy, you’re more than that.”PJ put his tan hand over his friend’s pale one and Phil jumped a little, unused to such sincerity and physical contact from his friend.But PJ ignored his sharp intake of breath as he looked into Phil’s blue eyes, “There’s more to life than this, and you deserve that.”

Phil coughed and looked away.

PJ sighed and leaned back in his chair, all of the seriousness of the previous moment evaporating, “After all,” he said, his tone wry even with his mouth full of egg roll, “you always said you wanted to travel.So what if Charlie wanted to be himself ‘free of tethers’, isn’t this a good time to search for yourself as well?Soon you’ll be too old to travel the world in a flight of fancy anyway, so isn’t this the best time to do it?”

“I’m only 22,” Phil rolled his eyes but he couldn’t help but grin.

“Come on,” PJ continued, his light eyes lighting up, “you could take off school for a few months.I’m sure they would understand after…” PJ coughed and Phil just bit his lip, now wasn’t the best time to bring up death or the people it had taken.“And besides,” PJ continued with only a slight falter in his tone, his eyes peeking at Phil through the frame of dark lashes,“when was the last time you took a break?You deserve a vacation,” he shot his friend a serious look, “and you need some time if you’re going to forget Charlie.Maybe you should talk to that kid who keeps stalking you.Dan, was it?”

Phil shook his head, his shaggy hair flopping over his forehead messily, “He’s just a fan, and you’re crazy. I can’t just leave.I’m paying to go to school!”

PJ sighed, disappointment coloring his breath as he cracked open one of the stale fortune cookie their waiter had left on the table.Then he smiled, the cookie and its paper message cradled in his large hands like it was as precious as gold, “Look!” he said and held it out for Phil to read.

_You will die alone and poorly dressed._

“Oh my god I love it!” PJ laughed, “These things are always a bunch of nonsense, but this is so dark.”

Phil just shook his head with a smile creeping across as he clumsily broke his own fortune cookie into a dozen uneven pieces.

“I suppose I might die alone and poorly dressed, but I would certainly hope not,” PJ continued on, but Phil wasn’t paying attention as he dusted off the tiny slip of paper.

“Phil?”

_A great love can be found where you least expect it.Do not fear the unknown, for it is only when we take a leap that we land in the golden garden._

 

_***_

 

After getting back from his lunch, Phil sat in his room determined to focus on editing.He was meant to have the one he was working on out yesterday, but with everything that had happened…Well, it hadn’t gone up. 

Phil clicked around iMovie for a few minutes, but all the jokes he’d told suddenly weren’t funny, all the graphics suddenly uninteresting. 

The tall boy let out a long breath as he pushed away from his desk.This obviously wasn’t happening now.He considered watching a few episodes of Buffy, Sarah Michelle Gellar was somehow always able to cheer him up.But as he sat on the dingy chair in the corner of his room he was suddenly assaulted with the scent of the last boy who’d occupied its sloping cushion.

_“This show is stupid Phil, can’t we watch something else?” Charlie grumbled as he shifted around in his seat._

_Its not stupid, Phil wanted to say, but instead he said, “Okay.”_

_“Thank god,” Charlie mumbled as he pulled out his phone, leaning against the arm and slinging his feet over the other side.“Why do you even watch it anyway?”_

_Phil pushed down the annoyance tingling in his stomach and sat up a little straighter from where he was slouched against his dresser.“I like it,” he said simply, if a little weaker than he intended._

_“Well its shit.”_

_Phil stared at the wall across from him and tried not to say anything.This wasn’t important. Buffy wasn’t more important than making a…friendship…relationship…whatever is was they had work._

_The blue-eyed boy stretched out his legs on the floor and fiddled with the end of his slightly-too-small shirt as he mustered up his courage to speak.“Charlie,” he blurted, a little louder than intended.“Uh…”_

_“Yeah,” Charlie looked up, a little annoyed he’d been interrupted from whatever he was doing.“Get on with it then.”_

_“Oh,” Phil bit his lip and shook himself, this wasn’t him, he wasn’t some shy little closeted high schooler anymore.“I was wondering if you wanted to go somewhere nice on friday.”He said quickly, his accent coming out a little on the o’s in his nervousness.“I mean to dinner,” he continued, keeping his gaze fixed on the little radiator in the center on the wall._

_“What…like a date?”Charlie sat up and Phil tried not to read too much into the surprise in his voice._

_“Yeah,” Phil said quietly, but then with more confidence, turning to meet Charlie’s unreadable expression.“I can take us somewhere nice, and I can pay, and it’ll be like a real, proper date and I-“_

_“Phil,” Charlie interrupted, holding a hand up.“You know we’re not…boyfriends, right?”_

_Phil felt something in his heart drop.“Yeah, yeah,” laughter somehow trickled out of his tight throat.“Of course, of course, I just meant like a-“_

_“I didn’t mean to make you think-“ Charlie’s brows furrowed._

_“No, of course I didn’t” Phil shook his head frantically._

_“We just fuck.”_

_Phil felt like his eyes were frozen open, pools of icy confusion as they locked like magnets on Charlie’s downturned mouth._

_“We fuck,” Charlie continued, his voice gaining a note of pity, but retaining its lazy casualness.“I thought that’s what we both wanted.”_

_“Oh,” the small noise dripped out of Phil’s mouth without his consent, betraying more of the pain and confusion he felt than he wanted.“What if I…” he gulped and closed his eyes tightly before opening them quickly and locking with Charlie’s dark irises.“What if I wanted more than that?”_

_“I can’t give you that,” Charlie said simply, getting abruptly out of the sofa and walking from the room._

_Phil stared at the radiator._

Phil pulled out his phone, looking at the last text conversation he’d had with Charlie, four days ago.

Charlie: cant giv u wut u want 

Phil stared at those small, harsh words and clenched the phone tightly in his fist and tried to avoid looking at the message right after.

Charlie: think i should just leave.it was good while it lasted

Phil couldn’t even be mad, he felt just…emptied out.Like everything that was supposed to be in his chest had been scraped out by lions claws, leaving only a ragged hole where everything that made him alive was supposed to go.The tall boy closed his eyes, laughing a little too himself.He really was getting too emo.

He shoved his phone in his pocket and stood from the chair, moving back over to the computer.Phil slouched his long, gangly body down in his broken desk chair, his fingers seemed to flick open Facebook on their own.He clicked around a bit before looking at his friend requests. 

_Daniel Howell_ , the name read and Phil looked over at the profile picture.A young looking boy with long hair and a coy look on his face stared back at him and Phil couldn’t drag his eyes away.Daniel Howell, he’d remembered that name, he’d replied to a lot of his tweets and commented on nearly all of his videos.Phil’d said he was just a fan and dismissed him, but something made him take a second look and he couldn’t bring himself to delete the request.It had sat in his notifications for about a week, staring at him while he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t just accept or decline.

But sucking in a quick breath, Phil’s finger pressed accept request quickly and he closed his browser tab, pushing away and holding the desk at arms length.He leaned his head down onto the cool wood, his hair brushing uncomfortably into his eyes. 

“What are you trying to do Philly boy?” He whispered too himself, voice cracked with emotion.“Talking with cute boys on the internet isn’t going to make Charlie come back." 

But maybe that’s not even what he wanted. 

***

 

The wind whipped past Phil as he walked past Picadilly Square, the chill of it nipping to his bones and making him feel alive in a way he hadn’t in a long time. _Maybe I do need a haircut,_ he thought to himself as his fringe hit him in the eye, temporarily blinding him, and he stepped over to the side of the pavement, out of the way of the bustling stream of people as he tried to rub the sting out of his eye.  As he stumbled over the curb in an attempt to move out of the way of a businessman barreling by he felt a buzz in his pocket and whipped out his phone as fast as he could.

People shoved past him, annoyed, but he didn't notice ad he stood there reading Dan’s message, a dopey smile on his face. 

Dan: <3 <3 <3

Three hearts that’s all it took to make Phil’s heart melt apparently and the tall twenty-two year old couldn’t stop his face lighting up in an uncontrollable grin, happier than he’d ever been, alone in the middle of an unknown city.

He had the best boyfriend in the world.

 

***

 

“I can’t stay, I need a change.” Phil said, sitting at his mum’s counter, eating a piece of cherry pie as his father puttered about in the other room.

“I know,” the older woman smiled putting more pie in front of her son.“But you’ll be back.”It wasn’t a question, but Phil still nodded.

“I’ll be back.”

 

***

 

The wind curled its freezing tendrils around the tips of his gloved fingers, tossing the straightener burnt ends of his too long dyed-black hair against the gray, summer skyIt was the end of an era, his aimlessly wandering heart was finally going to search out some answers instead of clinging to something that didn’t exist. 

As Phil stepped onto the train, excitement fizzed in his stomach like carbonated soda.This felt like a step beyond the old him, a step towards amazing Phil.Maybe he _was_ only taking a short trip to London, but it felt like more than that. 

Phil soft smile felt like a secret, as he heard a distinctive text tone chime from his back pocket.A weeklong trip to London was a lot for him, and his phone, full of encouraging messages from Dan, seemed to agree.

 


End file.
